Many of the same issues I found with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I still find with this new installation. While Desolation of Smaug is clearly the better movie, I felt it was still missing the magical and enchanting charm of the Lord of the Ring Franchise.

Premise: Desolation of Smaug picks up where the first movie left off. The gang is still on their quest to reclaim Erebdor, but now being persued by Azog and his Orc gang from An Unexpected Journey. After escaping the Orcs with the help of the elves, they enlist the help of a man named Bard to sneak them into the town where descendants of Thorin Oakensheild’s people reside. With the town’s help they finally make it to the mountain in search to steal back the Arkenstone from a dragon named Smaug who took over the mountain long ago.

I loved The Lord of the Rings Franchise. After Return of the King was released, my friends and I built of fort out of couch cushions and blankets and watched all three back to back to back –the complete 4+ hours extended version. (I was in college FYI, so yeah, we were super cool.) But that’s how into the series I was. Unfortunately, I don’t feel the same about The Hobbit series. It’s a letdown. Okay, so the special effects are amazing, the visuals and the production design and just the vastness of this massive world is really quite an extraordinary feat, but yeah, as a movie: It’s a letdown.

Ending this movie on such a major and important cliffhanger did the movie a great disservice. It made the audience…ok well me…feel as if the rest of the movie were pointless. I understand that the movie is one book split into three parts, but I feel like it still needs to have a beginning, middle, and an end. Even if that ending is a cliffhanger. Harry Potter split Deathly Hallows into two parts, and I felt as if it ended at a good spot, where I was satisfied with the movie on its own, and yet salivating for the rest of it. (Then again, my bias can’t be trusted since I’m also a bigger fan of Harry Potter than I am this LOTR/Hobbit series.) Bilbo, Gandalf, and their dwarf friends travel to a mountain in to steal back the Arkenstone, but instead find a dragon. Everything in the movie leads up to the dragon then…end scene. Seriously? I’m as big of a fan as any at screaming WTF the second the screen cuts to black (re: LOST became the master of that. Scandal has no too.), but it just wasn’t satisfying. That’s like a movie ending mid fall after the main character falls off a cliff.

That being said, Desolation of Smaug was far better than the first movie. I love the incorporation of the elves. I enjoyed the love triangle between Kili, Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and a female elf named Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). I adored the dwarves great escape in wine barrels down a river, and the dragon vs. Bilbo scene was pretty excellent. Just give me more to hold on to. I couldn’t describe this movie to you without looking up the premise once again. And that’s bad. Also, Bilbo still isn’t as charming as Frodo.

Rating: 3 Stars

PS: I will show up for the final piece to the trilogy, because seriously, who doesn’t want to watch a dragon terrorize people?